Robert Glasper Experiment Comes to Buffalo State

The Buffalo State Performing Arts Center proudly welcomes the Robert Glasper Experiment on Thursday, April 20, at 8:00 p.m.

By the age of 12, Robert Glasper was playing piano in church and accompanying his mother at jazz and blues clubs in Houston, Texas. Raised on gospel, Motown, and R&B, Glasper was listening to jazz, rock, pop, and hip hop by his teens. He attended the Houston High School for the Performing Arts and moved to New York City to study at the New School University. While still in college, he played with the likes of Christian McBride and Kenny Garrett, and went on to play with Nicholas Payton, Terence Blanchard, and Roy Hargrove.

Released in 2012, Black Radio, the first full album from the Robert Glasper Experiment, defied entrenched musical genres and drew from all categories of contemporary black music. The album met with both commercial success (a #10 debut on Billboard's Top Current Albums chart) and wide critical acclaim, with Rolling Stone declaring, “Glasper heads down the fraught path of hip-hop jazz and gets it right.”

After dominating the jazz charts, winning a couple R&B Grammys, recording with everyone from Norah Jones to Snoop Dogg, scoring a Miles Davis biopic, and playing keys on Kendrick Lamar’s landmark To Pimp A Butterfly, Glasper is currently collaborating on forthcoming albums from Herbie Hancock, Common, and Mac Miller, What's next for a band like the Robert Glasper Experiment? What can you do to level up? "You do you," says Glasper with a chuckle. "People need to hear what the Experiment sounds like, just us—know what our vibe is and can be."

Tickets for the Robert Glasper Experiment go on sale Wednesday, February 8, at 9:00 a.m. Tickets are $40 to $45 and may be purchased at the Rockwell Hall Box Office, 1300 Elmwood Ave., by calling (716) 878-3005 or online. Box office hours are Monday to Friday, 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m.